Random ramblings.

So, things have been crazy lately, which has resulted in even less blogging. I know, the world is crying and all, but I still feel like there is a hole in my life, having not put anything “real” on my blog for a long time. And, if I have “random” in the title, I feel like I can talk about a few things that have happened lately, and not be worried about staying focused on one thing. So here goes.

This week, Amy and I went to a funeral for my oldest niece Kayci’s sweet baby boy. I was so grateful to be able to go, since it was held in Rexburg, Idaho. After a frusterating morning, Amy and I literally flew up to Rexburg and made it to the viewing and funeral with minutes to spare. I felt like we had angels pushing our car to help us make it in time. It was hard to see my family in such a sad setting. We are all so heartbroken for Kayci and her husband Jeff. They have an older daughter, Grace, who is just the cutest, feistiest little girl. I haven’t seen her in a few months, and she has grown up so much, and looks so much like her mom. Since we were so rushed getting to Rexburg, Amy and I took a little more time afterwards and spent some time with Kayci and were able to visit her apartment to see where they live. We even got to see the brand new town homes that Jeff and Kayci will be moving to in December (hope, hope!). It was great to see her and her sweet little family. They live just down the hill from the new Rexburg LDS temple. It is such a beautiful building. They will be able to look out their window each day and see it gleaming on the hill; how lucky!

The ride to and from the funeral was spent talking, talking, talking with Amy. She had brought a new CD to listen to, but honestly, I didn’t hear more than a few bars of the music. When we are together, we are able to say pretty much anything to each other. Having that time with her made the day just a little easier. We understand each other pretty well, which is a blessing in both of our lives, I think.

Today, being Halloween, I took off half the day so I could spend some time in Thomas’ class to help with his party. It was so fun being in his classroom, seeing how he interacts with his teacher and friends. I helped at the “mummy” game, where each of the children were able to wrap one of their classmates in toilet paper to look like a mummy. They loved it! I loved tonight when I asked Thomas the “what was your favorite part?” question, and he answered, “The mummy game!” He is such a sweet boy.

I also got some pretty cool news today. A while ago, I posted an essay I had written for the county library contest. I found out today that they selected my essay to publish in the library’s quarterly newsletter! I was so excited when I found out. I am just excited that I had followed through with something I had wanted to do, and actually did it. Until I started this blog a few months ago, I hadn’t written much in years. I know I could do more, but I feel like this blog has taken me out of the doldrums of liking to write but never actually doing it. Now I have a forum where I can write things, however silly, and feel some sense that I’m not just wasting that English degree I got 10 years ago. It has been fun, and I’m grateful for blogging, and for the people I have met through blogging.

Anyhow, I really should be folding some laundry now, so I will close. Thanks for reading my randomalities!

Meme

Due to the fact that I haven't put anything on my blog for a long time, I stole this from Amy.

The best thing you cooked last week? Caramel apple cake…mmm!

If money, time and babysitting were no object, where would you go and with who? I would go to New York City for a while, and then go on to England, France, and Italy.

When was the last time you cried? A few weeks ago at work. I ended up bawling my eyes out over a company issue in front of my bosses boss, who was incredibly nice, helpful and understanding. Yes, I am a little embarrassed now!

Five things you were doing this month 10 years ago

Shane and I had only been dating for about 3 months.
I was spending my weeks in Utah County, and my weekends in Salt Lake, so I could spend time with Shane.
I was at UVSC for my last semester before moving on to the University of Utah. I wish I could have stayed at UVSC; I love that school!
Living at home with my parents.
I can’t think of another thing. The previous pretty much sums it up!

Five things on your to-do list today
Laundry
Hanging out with my good friend Mel while Shane is doing boys night
FINALLY I have committed to a quilt pattern for Ben’s Christmas quilt. I will start cutting squares tonight.
A nap.
Adding something new to my blog, since it’s been forever.

Five favorite snacks
Chili cheese dip
Avocado salsa
Popcorn
Salt & Vinegar chips
Dr Pepper (I know, not technically a snack, but I drink it so often it should be)

Five Bad Habits
Dr pepper
Reading when I should be doing other stuff
Leaving things until the last minute
Checking blogs when I’m supposed to be doing the laudry!
Buying things that I don’t have to have, but really want!

Five favorite foods
Anything I didn’t have to cook
Cheese potatoes (funeral potatoes to many ‘round these parts!)
Café Rio
Bajio
Chinese

Five places I've been

Washington DC
Spokane, WA
Philadelphia
New York City
Traveling down the west coast and then up the east coast of Florida on a really fun spring break

Five Favorite Memories
When my kids were born
School at Virginia Tech
Going to Lake Powell as a kid
Doing Modern Dance in college
Being young & single and having my best friends all living in the same city as me, spending every night together doing girl stuff.

Feel free to steal this if you want; I did!

Woman to Woman

Book Review: Garden Spells, by Sarah Addison Allen .

I picked Garden Spells to review because, well, it’s the most recent book I’ve finished! But I don’t think I could have planned to have a better book to review.

Claire and Sydney are both Waverly’s. The Waverly’s lost their “money” generations ago, and all they have as a legacy is a beautiful old house and a magical apple tree that shows people the most significant event in their life, be it good or bad. Claire has always been proud to be a Waverly, but Sydney spent her whole life trying to distance herself from her family and its oddities. She runs away from home and doesn’t return for 10 years, when she finds herself and her 5 year old daughter in a situation that is lethal.

Claire meanwhile has spent her life trying to feel that she truly belongs in the life she has chosen. She uses the edible flowers and herbs that grow in her magical garden to her advantage by starting a catering business. She is able to add certain ingredients to her food that inspire love, forgiveness, passion, despair. Then a man comes along who seems to be immune to the magic of her garden, but highly susceptible to the magic of Claire. Throw in an aunt with the ability to give “presents” to people that they will need hours or days in the near future, and you’ve got the recipe for a wonderful, magical book that is a delight to read.

One of my favorite aspects of the book was that it reminded me of the movie version of Practical Magic, which was based on the book by Alice Hoffman. Allen’s writing style brings some of the same aspects of the magic of nature and plants, enhancing her books in a way that makes them memorable. Garden Spells is really a fast read, and the characters are so warm and real and funny that I couldn’t help but love it. I would recommend this to just about anyone, because it appeals on so many levels.

Book reviews: Bliss and Infidel

I recently read two books, Bliss by O.Z. Livaneli and Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. I can’t say that I know much about Middle Eastern culture, or the Muslim religion. Most of my reading throughout my life has centered in American or European cultures, and usually then it has been fiction. I’ve read a lot of books where women have been treated badly, where they been dealt blows in their lives from people that they loved, but they have family or friends in their lives who love them and try to help them out of their bad situation. This, however, is not the situation with Bliss or Infidel.

In Bliss, you are introduced to a young girl who gets violated by her uncle who then locks her in the barn, and orders his recently decommissioned son to take her to “Istanbul;” code for taking her on a long trip and killing her because she has lost her honor. What the uncle doesn’t realize is that Meryem, the young girl, has a huge will to live, and her cousin Cemal has begun to doubt his father’s authority. The pair meet up with a professor who has taken leave of his life, and has rented a sailboat so that he can sail around the Aegean sea and try to reconnect with himself. The three make an unlikely pact, and spend the next few weeks trying to puzzle out their relationship with each other and their lives.

Infidel took me a long time to read, partly because it was so detailed, partly because it was non-fiction, and I don’t usually find myself reading nonfiction. Ayaan Hirsi Ali grew up in Somalia, which was going through a civil war in her youth. She and her brother, sister and mother go from one African/Middle Eastern country to another, trying to stay true to their Muslim faith, puzzling out their world. Ayaan eventually is forced into a marriage that she does not want, and she makes a break for freedom en route to her new husband by becoming a refugee in Holland. There, she is able to become educated and starts to question the way that she was brought up and the religion that has shaped her life. She becomes a very outspoken member of the Dutch Parliament, eventually having the go into hiding because of death threats against due of her criticism of the treatment of women in Islam.

These are two very different books, but both deal with the suffering of women. I am not a political person. I don’t have really strong feelings one way or another about this or that world leader, or even this or that political party for that matter. If I like the person, I like them, and don’t really get into the politics of what their party means about them. I do, however, read a lot and try to broaden who I am through the books that I read. My recent journeys into books that are out of my norm have opened up my eyes to the suffering that goes on in the world. I understand that my own religion/culture have misconceptions in the world, and I am not trying to attack anyone’s faith; I understand how deeply rooted our traditions and beliefs are in our lives.

Mainly I identified with these women in they ways they tried to balance out their beliefs and how their religion should be the centerpiece of their life with what they saw in the outside world and how it could be if they didn’t believe facet of what they were taught. For some of us faith comes so easily; for others, we have to find out for ourselves whether our religion can stay alive for us in the real world. Meryem finds her way to a kinder, more serene life where she can have love and acceptance and a livelihood. Ayaan tries hard to put all that doesn’t add up with the way she was taught behind what she calls a “shutter.” She says this in one section:

Sometimes the shutter wouldn’t close any more: I had stuffed too many ideas behind it. I would have an attack of guilt, and take stock of myself: the trousers, the hair, the books the ideas. I would think about Sister Aziza’s angels, who were certainly still on my shoulders, watching me, recording it all. I would tell myself, weakly, that I was pursuing knowledge…I told myself that one day, when I had developed the willpower, when I was back in a Muslim environment, I would find the strength to repent and truly obey God’s laws. Meanwhile, I would be honest. I would try not to harm anyone. I would not myself adopt the ideas I was reading about. But I would keep reading them.

How well I can understand this. But we all come to the day when we have to reconcile all the “stuff” we have put behind our shutter. We have to come to terms with the “sins” that we have committed, and decide if they really are sins (and therefore we need to repent) or if they are our lives (meaning we need to admit who we are to ourselves and live the life we have chosen.) Ayaan chooses to turn away from her religion and culture, and try to help those who suffer within them. She does this at the cost of her family, her job, a dear friend who is murdered because of her, and eventually her adopted country.

Sometimes we can’t reconcile what we put behind our shutters. Sometimes, good or bad, it all spills out and we can’t put it all back together, we can’t go back to being the people we once were or thought we were supposed to be. We need to figure out who we are now, and do what we can to improve on that person.

Library essay

So, the Salt Lake County library system did an essay contest about how the library has affected your life. I decided to write about my dad, who was diagnosed with early-onset Alzhiemers two years ago. My dads regression has been very rapid; two years ago, he knew something was wrong, but he still could communicate well and was mostly self-sufficient. It is so sad to me how much he has changed; my dad was always quiet, but now he is almost silent. He can't read anymore, which I still can't believe, because books were always a huge part of his life. So, as a tribute to my quiet, kind father, I wrote this piece. I wanted to share it on my blog. I hope you enjoy it!

His long walks often take him past the small building that doubles as library and municipal building, but he rarely steps inside to find a good book. Gone are the days when four young daughters accompanied him to the library, as are the days when he could comprehend the words he deciphers. Despite this, I’m unable to separate the library in my life from the person who made me love it: my dad.

I grew up in Springville. Our small library contained many wonders for me as a child, the most notable a book I read over and over called Through the Years with Henrietta. Back then, before computerized card catalogues, before barcodes that tracked the book and the patron who’d checked it out, the library’s simple yet effective system was to write the last four digits of the patron’s phone number on a card that fit into an envelope pasted on the back cover. I’m positive Henrietta’s card had our “7586” phone number listed on at least half of the lines.

Whenever I needed something to read, I would plead with my dad to take me to the library to check out Henrietta (or another book about dolls, they were my favorite!) One or two of my sisters usually made the familiar trek with me. We’d pile out of the `72 Ford Torino and get right to our first task: transporting the mountain of (usually overdue) books filling the backseat from the car into the library. The librarians probably cringed when they saw us coming, our arms stacked high with books, our many pauses to pick up the books that had slipped from the tottering stacks, our giggles and the bangs of books echoing around the austere hall.

Once inside, Dad would quietly slip away, his desire to find his next book as urgent as his need to separate from his daughters’ noisy searches. He was content to let us use our own means to find what we wanted to read. We might find him later in a corner, reading the newspaper or admiring a recently donated sculpture. He might even be chatting with an old friend, laughing his way through some long-ago story involving a car, a steep hill and an old tire. He’d find his own stash of books and pile them along with ours on the counter. Trouble usually ensued at this point when we discovered that no one had actually remembered their library card; couldn’t we check them out anyway and promise to bring one next time? Being on first-name basis with the librarians, this usually worked. They were probably just glad to see the backsides of us.

Flash forward to 2007. Now I live in Salt Lake County, and call Kearns Library my library of choice. For me, it has the intimate, small town library feel that I grew up with. My Dad still lives in Springville, but his trips to the library for books or a chat are gone. His early-onset Alzheimer’s was diagnosed two years ago, at age 64. The quiet man who loved to laugh at stories no one else got and who loved to read has diminished to a nearly silent man who doesn’t understand words he can still pronounce.

Last summer Dad came to stay for a weekend and we made a quick trip to the library. My sons were excited to show Grandpa around the building they visit each week. His quiet smiles and frequent answers of “okay” to their childish requests showed me that he was glad to be in a place he still understood. In an effort to reach the man I knew growing up, I found him John Irving’s Until I Find You, hoping that since he had read it before, he may have an easier time understanding it. He cradled the book as we checked out, my organized older self supplying the library card.

I realized as I drove us home that the tables have turned; now I am the one taking him to the library, and it is my sons’ books and laughter filling the car. Now I can only hope that he took away more than books from those long-ago library adventures. I know that I certainly did.